


It's Not Your Fault

by forsurebuddy



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, eeeeeep this is super dark and i don't know where it came from, sorry for the pain!, tw: torture and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-06 22:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10346448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsurebuddy/pseuds/forsurebuddy
Summary: You blink and more tears roll down your face. Your vision blurs but you can see her, always see her, and you shake your head wordlessly. Even if she could hear you, there are no words for this.





	1. Chapter 1

When your eyes open, they open slowly. You struggle to surface against the weight of whatever you’ve been drugged with. It feels as though a fog has settled around and over you – it creates a seal around your lungs so you can’t breathe, forces your eyes shut, like a lead blanket.

Finally you feel a small leak of clean, fresh air break its way into your lungs. You fight to open your eyes, look down and around. You’re sitting- wrists and ankles bound by zip ties to the chair you’ve been placed in. The chair is bolted to the floor –you can’t move an inch. You’re facing a wall made of glass, looking into a much smaller room, with another steel chair waiting in the middle. You turn your head as far as you can, feeling the soreness in your neck as you force it up from your chest.

You’re in a warehouse of some kind- it’s big, lit by flickering fluorescent bulbs. The space is littered with work tables, computer consoles, small groups of conferring men and women in lab coats. There are people all over the place, but everyone hurries past you as if you’re not there. You turn to the other side- nothing there but a medical tray. There’s something on it, but it’s covered. Your heartbeat trips.

As adrenaline floods you, the final fog from the drugs lifts from your body. You can open your eyes fully, feel your muscles, bound though they are, flex at your command. You seem uninjured- whole, but restrained. You take a few deep breaths to stay calm. The GPS device in your watch has surely been activated- your sister and your team must be on their way. 

“Agent Danvers. Pleased to see you’ve finally joined us,” a voice lilts at you. You turn to your right, slowly. You’re not going to panic, or let this woman, this foul woman who has tried to take everything away from you, know that you might be scared.

Lillian Luthor stands there, smug, with her hands on her hips. She smiles at you, showing her teeth. You grimace at her, flex your hands to keep your calm.

“Where is my father?” You ask. “What have you done with him this time?” The words growl out of your throat. 

Lillian laughs out loud at that. You grit your teeth and your hands knot up in fists. 

“Agent Danvers, you know by now that I haven’t done anything to your father. You know he worked with us willingly. Until you walked into our facility, he was second in command only to me. As for now… he’s not really your concern. I think you’ll find that there are more immediate problems you’re going to need to deal with.”

You grip the arms of the chair and force yourself to calm down. 

“So- what? What information do you think you’re going to torture out of me?” You spit at her. “I’ll never tell you anything about the DEO or Supergirl, and you seem to already know it all anyway. What do you want?” 

You try to keep her talking. Kara has to be on her way. 

She smiles at you again, and shakes her head. “You underestimate my depth of feeling, Agent Danvers. This isn’t a lark for me- it’s my life’s mission. You singlehandedly wrecked a plan that we had been working on for months. You turned Jeremiah against me after almost ten years of good work. 

“I have no interest in trying to torture information out of you. Like you said – I know it all already. And you’ll know when we strike next.“

“So what,” you growl out, punctuating each word, “Do you want?” 

She turns her head, looking into the glass encased room with the steel chair in the middle. She makes a small gesture with her right hand – in fact she barely moves it. And then a door opens, and a man walks in to the room, with a body draped over his shoulder.

You see dark hair, a leather jacket. The shine of a gold badge. Your heart clenches, painfully hard, as you feel the breath knocked from your body. Your grip on the arms of the chair tightens until your knuckles are white. 

The man drops Maggie into the chair, quickly zip tying her ankles and wrists, until they’re a mirror of yours. Her head lolls against her chest, but you can see blood on her face. 

“What I want, Agent Danvers,” you hear from your right, without looking up, without looking away, “Is to cause you pain. As much pain as humanly possible.”

You hardly hear the click of her heels against the floor as she walks away. You can’t take your eyes off Maggie. You can’t breathe – your heart is beating too hard in your chest and you can feel every single thump as though they’re being beaten into you. You’ve been left alone now – there is no need to stand guard over a woman whose whole body, whole being is focused on someone else. 

You’re not a flight risk anymore. Not without her. 

The man in the room – he’s not even masked, they don’t care if you see his face, commit every part of him to memory as a target for your rage - dumps a bucket of ice water over Maggie’s head. You flinch with her as she wakes. The glass is mostly soundproof – you can’t hear her gasp but you feel it as though she were right next to you. 

She struggles for a second, then feels the zip ties holding her to the chair. And then she looks up. And her eyes land on you. There are already tears in your eyes- you can feel them, you try to swallow them back but they refuse to disappear. 

You see her try to talk to you. Her lips – you kissed those lips this morning, smiled into them as you woke up – form your name. You struggle again against your bonds. It’s no use, and you know it. 

You scream for her. Your throat feels like it’s being ripped into shreds but you shriek her name, over and over again, she has to hear you, has to know you’re coming and you’ll save her. You’ll find a way. You can taste your own tears in your open mouth as you roar her name. 

She’s shaking her head at you, her eyes soft while they bore into you. “I’m okay,” you make out. “It’s okay.” You stop yelling, look at her with those damn tears rolling down your face. She repeats herself – it’s okay, baby, don’t struggle, Alex please, please don’t give them a reason to hurt you – and you stare into her eyes. You will never forget her face like this.

The man knocks on the glass to get your attention. He draws your eyes away from Maggie to the taser he has in his hands. He toys with it, toys with her, as he brushes it past her hair, just close enough for her to hear the sizzle but not enough to shock. She flinches away but keeps her expression stoic. She keeps her eyes open the whole time. 

She can barely move her hands, but she flexes just enough to flip her palm up towards you. She’s reaching, struggling against her ties, yearning for you with her fingertips, when he jabs the taser into her side. 

Her fingers clench into a fist, she shudders violently and her eyes roll, but she doesn’t yell out. 

He takes the taser away, only to reapply it directly to her neck. He has to brush her hair out of the way to do it. You feel her hair against your fingertips as if it were you.

This time her teeth snap together, you can see her jaw clench and the muscle working. She turns away from you now, so you can’t see her eyes. You won’t look away. You watch every second. You see her writhe as he shocks her over and over. She won’t look at you. You know she’s doing it to spare you the pain, you know it deep in your bones and in your lungs even while you feel like you’re breaking apart, but it feels to you like a condemnation. 

Finally he gives up on the taser. Maggie hasn’t yelled out, not once, and although you are wrecked, you can clearly see him decide that it isn’t enough. He takes the taser with him as he leaves the room. 

Maggie looks up, finally. She’s panting, her hands clenched, but she looks up at you and tears spill down her face. She shakes her head at you.

It’s not your fault. She doesn’t have to form the words for you to hear it in her voice. 

You blink and more tears roll down your face. Your vision blurs but you can see her, always see her, and you shake your head wordlessly. Even if she could hear you, there are no words for this.

When the goon comes back, all he has with him is a knife and a towel, but he sets them on the floor by the door. He advances towards Maggie, eyes on you, and he looks at you through the glass as he drives the first punch into her stomach. 

She doubles over in her chair, and he throws another punch into her temple. Her chair isn’t bolted to the floor- his hit knocked it over and she slams into the ground. He kicks her once, in the side, before he picks her up and rights her chair. 

You’re screaming again – you didn’t even realize. You’re out of your mind, you’re sobbing, you can’t breathe, you would rather die than this, as he hits her again and again. She’s bleeding everywhere but he hasn’t knocked her out. You can hear her grunt as he hits her, but she still won’t scream. When he pauses to catch his breath, she spits blood and red spots cloud your vision.

You force yourself to stay awake, to stay present- you need to stay there with her. You need to suffer too.

The man throws punch after punch until he tires, and then he grabs the knife. He paces towards Maggie, dancing the tip of the blade over the backs of her hands. He gives her shallow cuts- deep enough to scar but not enough to kill – on the back of her neck, on her fingers. It’s not until he plunges the knife into her thigh that she screams for the first time. He pulls the knife out of her leg and presses the towel into the wound. He wraps it around her leg so tight she screams again, and you have to fight again to keep from passing out. 

He’s just lining up another shot when he looks up. You look around as the warehouse is suddenly bathed in red light, and a warning klaxon echoes around you. Maggie’s head is against her chest now – she’s looking down and you can barely make out her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. Her breathing is shallow, and you can hardly breathe at all.

The look on the goon’s face has become one of fear. He looks at you in the eyes, then turns and runs out of the room, while the warning sirens continue to sound. Then you hear a rush of wind behind you.

Kara blasts through the warehouse doors with J’onn by her side and a team of DEO agents at her back. She flies to you, cuts you free, but she doesn’t see Maggie. You don’t see anything else. 

“Alex, Alex look at me, are you hurt? What happened?” She holds you at arm’s length and scans your body for injury, but you’re fighting to get away. You pull out of her grasp and run to the glass wall. You slam your fists against it, as you hear Kara’s intake of breath.  
Strong arms pull you away from the window, holding you tight around the waist as you fight, writhing against them, screaming again, and you see red light explode from Kara’s eyes to the window. 

The glass heats and shatters, and you’re finally free, free to sprint to Maggie’s side. A DEO agent comes up behind you and cuts her ties, before he follows Kara and J’onn to search the rest of the facility. She falls into your arms as you kneel in front of her. 

You slide onto your knees, rest her head on your thighs, grab one of her hands and put pressure on her leg with the other. Her eyes open. You think it happens slowly, but everything seems to be in slow motion now. You keep one hand on her thigh but raise the other to her face. You barely touch her, barely graze your fingertips over her cut lip, the split in her eyebrow, the knife marks left on her collarbones, and your tears fall freely, landing on Maggie’s face and chest. 

“I’ve got you,” you whisper to her over and over. “I’m so sorry. I’ve got you, you’re going to be fine.”

You think it’s impossible, but she reaches up to brush away one of your tears before she passes out. You hold her tighter and scream for Kara. You don’t know how you still have air left in your body to scream.

You sob over her body, keeping pressure on her wound, until Kara bursts through the door in the side of the room. She kneels by your side, and takes Maggie into her arms. She has to fight you because you’re consumed with fear and pain and can’t force yourself to let go. 

Kara pulls her away gently. She opens her mouth and says something but you can’t hear at all. Then she turns and says something else to J’onn, who’s beside you in his Martian Manhunter uniform. Kara lifts into the air, Maggie hanging limply in her arms, and flies away at top speed. 

And finally, finally you collapse to your knees, sobbing again, breathless.


	2. Chapter 2

You’re not sure how you get back to the DEO. Maybe J’onn flies you. Maybe he drives. You think you remember him touching down with you in his arms at the big window to the DEO. You’re hardly aware. He has to half-carry you, half-restrain you as you run to the med bay, where you can see doctors working furiously on Maggie. Kara stands outside, hands braced on the window ledge, until she sees you approach. 

J’onn lets you go only once you’re safe in Kara’s arms. You turn towards the window, Kara’s hands on your shoulders and your back, as she speaks.

“She’ll be okay, Alex. They said only the leg was bad. They’re going to fix it.”

You try to shoulder past her, to get into the room with Maggie, but she holds you back. 

“You know you can’t, Alex. Let them work.”

You round on her with fire in your eyes, but Kara looks despondent, and you let her take you into her arms again, sink down to the floor where you sit there, silent, barely breathing. 

It seems like hours, like days before anything changes. You feel empty, a shell, hardly living. You close your eyes to blink your tears away but when they shut you see Maggie, screaming in pain with a knife in her leg. You let the tears run down your face after that.

Kara stays by your side, wiping your tears away and whispering to you, that she’ll be okay, it wasn’t your fault. The words feel as empty as you do. They mean nothing. You know Kara wants you to speak, to reassure her that you, at least, are okay. But you’re not, so you can’t. You can’t think anything, all you can hear is your blood rushing through your body like a wave.

You wish it wouldn’t. You would give anything for your blood to be on the floor now, so that Maggie could still be whole.

J’onn doesn’t stay by your side, but you can hear him pacing just out of your line of vision. He checks in every now and then, stopping to place his hand on your shoulder for only a moment. He watches Maggie through the glass while you sit with your back against the wall, not watching. 

When a doctor finally comes out of the med bay - it felt like days, but they were only working on her for a few hours, hours in which you haven’t moved, haven’t spoken, haven’t breathed– you stay sitting. Kara stands instantly, hands braced on her hips. 

“The leg wound was pretty bad. The blade nicked an artery and she lost a lot of blood, but we’ve repaired it. She’ll need to stay off it for awhile, but it should heal well. And all the cuts and bruises will heal too. She’s going to be okay,” the doctor says. He talks to Kara, not to you. You can’t even bear to look up at him, so you don’t blame him. 

Kara lets out a deep breath, then kneels again by your side, taking you into her arms. You can feel a few of her tears drop onto your shoulders, but you hardly feel anything at all. The only thing you register is how sick you feel at the pain that you’ve caused Maggie.

If she wasn’t with you, she wouldn’t be here right now. It runs through your head like a mantra, repeating against your eyelids.

Kara stands and looks through the window.

“She’s sleeping. Will you come with me to get checked out?” She asks. You shake your head. There’s nothing wrong with you that can be fixed by a doctor or an x-ray. She purses her lips, but nods. You haven’t spoken since you got back to the DEO and she’s clearly worried. Kara offers you her hand and helps you to your feet.

“At least go sit in there with her, Alex. She’d want you there.” 

You follow Kara into the room. She has to pull you because you catch sight of Maggie and stop dead. Her face is covered in bruises and stitches. There are bandages all over the back of her neck and stitches on her hands too. You can see a burn mark on her neck and her leg is bandaged. You feel sick. 

Kara sits you down on the chair next to Maggie’s bed and kneels in front of you, takes your chin in her hands and forces you to look in her eyes. 

“Alex, you know this wasn’t your fault. You know that,” she says. You shake your head, close your eyes and turn away, but she follows you. “You can’t put this on yourself. Nevermind that it’s not true, Maggie won’t allow it and you know it.”

You suck in a deep breath and you’re sobbing again. Kara holds you as you cry, over and over, whisper how you watched them do it, how you held Maggie’s eyes with your own as they stabbed her and punched her and shocked her. 

You cry yourself out with Kara, before she leaves to follow up on a lead on where Lillian Luthor went. She promises to come back right away, but secretly you feel a little glad to see her go. Now you can be alone with how you feel. How guilty you feel, how responsible, how wretched.

Maggie sleeps for hours. You sit curled up in your chair, watch her chest rise and fall. You don’t take your eyes off of her for a minute. People stop in to visit the two of you. Winn only stays for a few moments, sitting on the other side of Maggie and holding her hand. He tries to talk to you, ask how you are, but you don’t even look up in response. You can see him through the window talking to James outside the room after. James has his head in his hands.

J’onn comes in for a long, long time. He stands behind you with one hand on your shoulder. He doesn’t bother trying to talk to you. He just stands there, watching. He’s there when Kara comes back and sits on the other bed in the med bay. He squeezes her hand as she walks by. 

You fall into fits of sleep after sitting there for hours. You wake every few minutes, afraid that Maggie will wake up while you’re out. The few minutes of sleep you get are haunted by her screaming. You wake up sweating every time, afraid to make a sound that will jog her out of sleep. Halfway through the night you wake to find the room is empty, with a blanket tangled around your legs. You know Kara and J’onn can’t be far, but you appreciate the solitude. 

It’s more than five hours after the doctors left when Maggie wakes up.

Maggie’s eyes open slowly, so slowly. She shifts her body, and winces in response. You’re still curled in your chair, petrified, afraid to move or speak or disturb her, but her eyes find you anyway. You must look wrecked, because her eyes fill with tears. She holds out a hand to you, her fingers trembling.

“Alex,” she whispers, throat raw. 

You go to her side immediately, take her hand, kiss her fingers. You’re fucking crying again, sobbing as you hold her hand. You whisper into her palm, your first words since you were rescued, your first words since you screamed her name over and over in agony.

“I’m so sorry, Maggie. I’m sorry,” you repeat over and over. You say it until the words have no meaning, crying them into her hand until they’re just sounds, until they’re nonsense. She lets one tear drop before she’s shaking her head, tangling her other hand in your hair.

“Alex, you know it wasn’t your fault,” she whispers, “You know I don’t blame you, could never blame you for this.” 

She forces you to look up at her, smiles a watery smile. “Please tell me you know that. Please tell me you’re not blaming yourself,” she pleads. You look away. Her hands fall to yours, and she holds them so, so tight.

“You could have - you could have died, Maggie. And it’s because you’re with me,” you murmur to her. “They took you, they hurt you to hurt me.” More tears slide down your cheeks. “It’s because of me.”

Maggie grips your hands even tighter. “Alex, look at me,” she pleads. “Alex, please.”   
Her voice breaks and you shatter with it. You close your eyes tighter to stem the tears. She yanks at your arms, forcing you to turn around. 

“Dammit, Alex, listen to me!” she snaps. You turn towards her quickly, pain in your eyes. “They only took me to hurt you. I get it. But it’s still not your fault. You can’t take all the evil in this world, in CADMUS, in Lillian Luthor, and rest it on your conscience- I won’t allow it. You’re… you’re too good to hold that darkness in you.” She’s pulling you towards her again, bringing your face within a breath of hers. “I know you, Alex. I know you think that every bad thing that happens to your family is on your shoulders and yours alone. But it’s not. You’re not alone. I’m with you. And I’d go through all that again to be with you.” 

You break then – you’d thought you’d broken before, but now you collapse to Maggie, kissing her so gently, through the salt of both of your tears. She winces against your lips and you pull back, but just enough to rest your forehead against hers, so you can feel her breath on your lips. You kiss her eyebrows, her lashes, the slope of her cheekbone, so lightly she can barely feel it, just so she knows you’re there.

“You know this isn’t your fault – you just feel this way because it’s better than feeling powerless. It’s better than feeling like you can’t control everything around you because if you can control everything you can keep your family safe.”

 

Maggie blinks away more tears. “Tell me you believe me,” she says. “Tell me you know this wasn’t your fault.”

You turn your head, look away for a moment. She takes your face in her hands, pulls you close, leans in so her lips rest on your jawbone, your neck. She whispers to you, so softly, it’s hardly more than a breeze across your skin. “It’s okay, Alex. It’s okay for everything not to be your fault, it’s okay that you love someone who got hurt. It doesn’t mean it’s on you. It’s okay that you can’t protect everyone at all times. It’s okay to feel powerless sometimes. I know you know it, baby. Just say it out loud.”

The feeling blooms in your chest. It hurts, it burns you right behind your heart and forces you to look away from Maggie, to back away from her, because it’s painful, so painful to admit, but it’s a good burn. A healing burn.

“I can’t control everything,” you whisper. “I can’t always protect you, and it makes me feel so weak. I couldn’t do anything to save you, all I could do was watch you hurt, and it’s easier for it to be my fault than to be out of my power.” Maggie tilts her head at you, her eyes so soft, so full of light and pain. The burn in your chest eases as you speak and you know it’s right. “I believe you. You would never blame me for this and I couldn’t have stopped it. It wasn’t my fault,” you breathe, softly, brokenly.

Maggie exhales, but you turn back to her, your eyes suddenly hard. “But I will do my best, I – I’ll let them break my body and my mind before I let anything like that happen to you again.”

She takes your hands again and squeezes hard. She doesn’t need to say it for you to know she’d do the same for you. You run your fingertips across her new scars, kissing them gently.

“I love you,” you whisper. It trips out of you. You had wanted this to be a big moment – to say ‘I love you’ under a starry sky, or murmured against her back while you’re pressed up against her on her bike, or through the sunshine and haze of another morning with her glowing beside you. But you can’t stop it now, can’t go another minute without her knowing. She needs to know.

“I love you, Alex,” she murmurs back. “I love every part of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading guys. hope this wasn't too bad! thanks to @radmo for beta-ing. let me know what you thought.
> 
> i'm always around on tumblr @alex-x-danvers, so send me prompts or just let me know how much you love sanvers (i bet i love them more)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is pretty dark and I don't know where that came from. Trust me I want nothing but happiness for these two, who have totally taken over my life.
> 
> Cheers to @radmo on tumblr, who beta'd this for me and is in general one of my absolute favorite follows on tumblr. and you can catch me at @alex-x-danvers on tumblr where i'm ALWAYS down to talk sanvers, supergirl, or pretty much anything else. and also where i can take prompts, if you have any. hope you enjoyed this and it didn't break your heart too much :)


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